A new study reveals that nearly one in ten asthma cases could be prevented by improving urban environments—an insight with serious implications for minority communities disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards.
Researchers from Karolinska Institutet, as part of a major European collaboration, analyzed data from nearly 350,000 people across seven countries. They found that a combination of air pollution, dense urban development, and limited green spaces significantly increases the risk of asthma in both children and adults. These environmental stressors often overlap in low-income and minority neighborhoods, exacerbating existing health disparities.
“Previous studies have typically calculated the risk of one environmental factor at a time,” said Zhebin Yu, the study’s first author. “We have combined several environmental factors and described how they together affect the risk of developing asthma.” This multifactorial approach paints a clearer picture of how city living can harm respiratory health.
The study found that 11.6% of asthma cases could be attributed to these combined urban exposures. That means thousands of cases might be avoidable with better city planning. Erik Melén, the study’s senior author, emphasized the practical value of the findings: “This is useful for politicians and others involved in urban planning.”
The researchers plan to go further by analyzing participants’ blood samples to understand how environmental exposures affect the body at a molecular level. Their goal: to uncover how asthma develops and how to prevent it—especially in communities that bear the brunt of environmental neglect.
See: “1 in 10 asthma cases can be avoided with a better urban environment, large-scale study finds” (May 15, 2025)
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05-asthma-cases-urban-environment-large.html